


There is a tide in the affairs of men

by Donna_Immaculata



Category: DUMAS Alexandre - Works, Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas, d'Artagnan Romances (Three Musketeers Series) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon - Book, Friendship, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Pre-Slash, Seasickness, Sharing a Bed, Twenty Years After, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 08:52:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3971680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Diable!" resumed Aramis, "I have little fancy for the sea by day, still less at night; the sounds of wind and wave, the frightful movements of the vessel; I confess I prefer the convent of Noisy.”</i> Dumas, Twenty Years After, Chapter 43</p>
            </blockquote>





	There is a tide in the affairs of men

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ElDiablito_SF](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/gifts).



> _"Then wait," said Aramis; and with the terrible coolness which on important occasions he showed, he took one of the muskets from Tony, shouldered and aimed it at the young man, who stood, like the accusing angel, upon the rock._
> 
> _"Fire!" cried Grimaud, unconsciously._
> 
> _Athos threw himself on the muzzle of the gun and arrested the shot which was about to be fired._
> 
> _"The devil take you," said Aramis. "I had him so well at the point of my gun I should have sent a ball into his breast."_
> 
> _"It is enough to have killed the mother," said Athos, hoarsely._
> 
> _"The mother was a wretch, who struck at us all and at those dear to us."_
> 
> _"Yes, but the son has done us no harm."_
> 
> A missing scene set immediately after Aramis attempted to kill Mordaunt for informed evilness. Because 20YA is full of missing scenes where Aramis and Athos hang out and touch each other a lot. And if all goes well, I will write them all.

The men who climbed on board were still and silent. The encounter with the angel of vengeance had stirred something up in their souls that had laid buried there these twenty years, and cracks appeared in the crust that had formed over the simmering stew of half-forgotten memories and never-acknowledged guilt.

They were conducted to the berth which they were to occupy on the voyage: down the hatchway to the lower deck, where their compartments were pointed out to them. Just like he had done in Boulogne, Lord De Winter withdrew alone, leaving Athos and Aramis to share the other cabin.

“His Lordship looked very pale,” Athos observed once the door closed behind Aramis and him. He was watching his friend from the corner of his eye. “And so do you,” he added when Aramis maintained a determined silence. 

Aramis tugged off his doublet and flung it at the cot affixed to the boards that constituted the partition to the next cabin. “What do you expect?” he said, collapsing gracefully onto the cot on the opposite wall and throwing his arm over his face. “His Lordship just saw a ghost.” His voice, muffled by the billowing sleeve of his shirt that covered most of his face, was clipped and dry, as if he forced it out through a tightly clenched throat.

“Are you angry with me?” Athos said quietly. 

Aramis shook his head. “No.” 

“Are you sure?”

“Athos,” Aramis said through gritted teeth. “I am not.”

“I couldn’t let you kill him,” Athos said. He was unbuttoning his doublet slowly, with fingers that were stiff and shaky at the same time. “He hasn’t done us any harm.” He hesitated briefly. “Yet.”

“Yet,” Aramis echoed.

Athos sighed, chucked his doublet over Aramis’ and sank down on the cot, pushing both garments aside. He began to take off his boots. “If he comes after us,” he said and sighed again. “Aramis. If he comes after us… I thought of that moment, of him, many times.”

Aramis stirred. He shifted his arm and turned his head, and Athos saw one dark eye, narrowed against the candlelight, blinking up at him from beneath the folds of Aramis’ sleeve. 

“Ever since I took in Raoul,” Athos continued and it was a relief to see the corner of Aramis’ mouth twitch in amusement at the sound of his son’s name. “I wondered what had happened to the child. I knew she had a son.”

“De Winter should have killed him.” Aramis’ voice was cold and remote.

“Aramis!” Athos wasn’t shocked by Aramis’ words, but he felt that a reprimand was in order. “Kill a child?”

“Children die every day,” Aramis said. “That one was doomed from the moment he was conceived in that woman’s womb.”

A melancholy smile lit up Athos’ features momentarily. “Do you believe any infant is born to do evil? Is that what your brothers in the Society of Jesus teach?”

“We are all condemned souls when we enter this world,” Aramis said. “It takes the sacrament of baptism to cleanse us from original sin. Some souls are never cleansed.”

“His soul could have been.”

“Not with her as his mother.”

“His mother was dead. If somebody had taken him in-”

“Who would take in the son of such a mother?”

“Somebody did, because the boy survived.”

“Yes, and look what became of him. A fiend. Not less of a viper than she was.”

“But had he grown up with his uncle-”

“De Winter would have been found stabbed in his bed by the time the boy was old enough to understand what had happened to his mother.”

“So you’re saying that the mother’s sins condemned the son in his cradle?”

“Eve’s sin condemned the entire human race in its cradle.”

Athos leaned against the wall and gave himself over to the gentle sway of the ship. He rolled his head back, without taking his eyes off Aramis. “Do you truly believe that you acted as an instrument of divine justice when you took aim at that young man tonight?” he said softly.

“Athos,” Aramis said, and the edge of impatience began to creep into his voice. “This is not the time for a theological debate.”

“I’m curious,” Athos said. “Despite everything, I’ve never taken you for a religious man.”

Aramis snorted with laughter. “How so? Consider, Athos: it was the will of Heaven that that boy should die, and it was the perversion of Fate that he lived.” He turned his head and looked at Athos. “Somebody has to execute His will.”

“And He chose you?”

“Perhaps.” Aramis shrugged. “Perhaps He chose you. We won’t know until it comes to pass.”

“Because De Winter failed at executing the divine will and killing the boy in his infancy, Aramis?”

Aramis, rousing himself more and more from the apathy into which he had first fallen, rose on his elbow and spoke with something resembling his usual spirit. “Do you know how many times God ordered the death of babes and sucklings? Have you forgotten the massacre of the firstborn? ‘Make ready to slaughter his sons for the guilt of their fathers; lest they rise and possess the earth, and fill the breadth of the world with tyrants,’ says the Book of Isaiah.”

The ship gave a mighty lurch, and Aramis’ paled and fell back onto the cot. “Nobody ever said our Lord is merciful,” he muttered.

“I seem to remember,” Athos said slowly, “I heard a musketeer I once knew claim exactly that.”

“He must have been very young and foolish.”

“Charmingly so.”

Aramis’ mouth twitched in an imitation of a smile, which morphed into a grimace as the cot on which he lay bucked like a rocking horse. Athos stood and, bracing himself with his hands against the low ceiling, crossed the distance that separated him from Aramis with one step. 

“Are you going to be sick?”

Aramis squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.

“Good.” Athos sat down and began to take off Aramis’ boots. “We must have left the harbour,” he said.

Aramis groaned. “I’m aware of that,” he muttered. “Please, I beg of you, if you have to talk, talk about something else.”

Athos pulled off the second of Aramis’ boots and let it drop to the floor. “We’ve already covered infanticide,” he said pensively. “Where do we proceed from here? I could read you something.”

Aramis shot a meaningful glance at the tallow candle, which was spitting and sputtering and producing more soot than light.

“Hm,” Athos said, settling down more comfortably. He lifted Aramis’ legs and laid them across his lap, and then pulled his cloak over them both. “Or I could recite poetry to entertain you. An ode, perhaps. Or an epic.” His hand wrapped around Aramis’ ankle, he tapped his fingers against the jut of the bone there, cleared his throat and, with a sidelong glance at Aramis’ white face, began to declaim: “Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy.”

Aramis groaned and boxed Athos in the arm. “Mordioux!” he gasped, half in exasperation, half in amusement. “You have truly been sent upon this Earth to torment me, haven’t you, comte?”

Athos, laughter vibrating in his voice, continued unabashed. “Any cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea-”

“If you don’t stop right there,” Aramis said without opening his eyes. “I will gut you like a rabbit and feed your entrails to the fish.”

“You are spectacularly bloodthirsty tonight, Monsieur l’abbé.” Athos moved his hand up Aramis’ side and tugged the cloak up to cover his shoulder. He halted and frowned. “Are you thirsty? I will have Grimaud fetch you wine.”

“I’m not.” Aramis grimaced as if he’d been made to swallow a spoonful of pottage. “I am beginning to regret the wine I had for supper. Or indeed having had any supper at all.”

“Try to get some sleep. Your body will get used to the movements of the vessel when you sleep.”

“I doubt I will ever get used to the howling of the wind and the lashing of the waves against the ship’s sides,” Aramis said. “Why do they not affect you?”

Athos shrugged. “I spent some time on board ship as a youth,” he said. “I must have got used to it.”

“You truly are a favourite of the gods, Monsieur le comte, are you not?” Aramis swallowed jerkily and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The ship rolled, the floor rose and fell. Aramis, suddenly panic-stricken, flailed and gripped the edge of the cot, hard, digging his nails into the wood. Athos, who’d received a kick to the sternum from Aramis’ knee, groaned in pain, grabbed Aramis’ leg and hauled himself up to stretch out beside his friend. He motioned Aramis onto his side, slung his arms around him and pulled him against his chest. Aramis’ shirt was sweat-soaked and stuck to his back.

Athos unwrapped one arm from around Aramis and brushed away damp tendrils where they clung to Aramis’ cheek and temple. His handkerchief was beyond reach, and he grasped a fistful of his own sleeve instead and passed it over Aramis’ sweat-drenched brow. “Sleep,” he said calmly into the dark hair. He ran his hand over the edge of Aramis’ cheekbone, down his shoulder and chest, and pressed his palm against the heartbeat that was thumping wildly just beneath the thin layer of skin and the brittle cage of ribs and muscles. 

Aramis made a sound somewhere between a cough and a snort. “I doubt that I can,” he spat out. “The floor may be gone any second.” He spoke through teeth clenched as tightly as his hand around Athos’ wrist before his chest. “And so may my stomach.”

“Aramis, let go.” Athos twisted his wrist in Aramis’ convulsive grip to force him to loosen it and covered Aramis’ hand with his free one. He leaned over Aramis and blew out the candle. “This is more stable than you think,” he said, stroking the back of Aramis’ hand with his fingertips. “Close your eyes and let it rock you to sleep. I won’t let you roll away and drop to the floor if that’s what you worry about.”

“I know that. But even you can’t stop the floor from sliding away and dropping into nothingness.”

Athos slung a leg around Aramis’ and pulled him in more closely, so closely that he couldn’t tell if the harsh throb of blood that he felt in all his limbs was that of Aramis, or if his own heart had sped up to pump in sympathy.

“There isn’t such a thing as nothingness,” he said. “There’s always something. Natura abhorret a vacuo.”

“Oh God help me!” Aramis groaned. “First you make me theologise about the nature of divine justice, and now you wish to philosophise about the horror vacui?” But his shoulders relaxed and he shifted, pushing his leg further under that of Athos’. “Are you laughing?” Aramis stilled suddenly and turned his head, but Athos’ face was obscured from view.

“Never!” Athos was pressing his face into the back of Aramis’ neck, where he could sense damp skin concealed under the mass of tangled hair. “I wouldn’t dare.” 

It was, perhaps, the rocking of the ship, the continuous up-and-down, up-and-down; the heartbeat of the vessel as it thumped around them in the groan of wood, the rush of waves, the creak of masts, the howl of wind, a living beast like the Leviathan that had swallowed them and was carrying them off into the otherworld – the sense, in short, of being cradled in Morpheus’ own arms, that made them both slip away into sleep. The erratic heartbeat beneath Athos’ palm slowed and quietened even as his own hand and his arm, trapped under the weight of Aramis’ body, grew more and more numb. The last thing Athos felt, before he swam away into the world of dreams, were Aramis’ fingers around his wrist, like a bracelet or a gauntlet, and the feather-light brush of hair against his lips. 

Slithering back into consciousness, there was familiar weight and warmth. Even before he fully realised where he was, he knew that it was Aramis, sleeping in his arms the way he had slept on countless campaigns half a lifetime ago. It occurred to Athos, as his thoughts were sluggishly meandering through his waking mind, that this was the first time in sixteen years that he woke with another human being by his side. That might explain the reaction of his body, and Athos bit his lip and twisted his hips to roll away from Aramis. But there was no space to manoeuvre, and he slotted back into the spot that he had previously occupied. 

“Diable!” he muttered soundlessly, wavering between exasperation and amusement. There was no space to move, he couldn’t wake Aramis who appeared to be sound asleep – and who was much, much heavier than Athos remembered, as he abstractedly noted, trying to wriggle a degree of life back into his hand – and there was nothing he could do to alleviate the condition. There was nothing he could do but wait for it to pass; it wouldn’t take long, his body would get bored if he didn’t pay it any attention and abandon its attempt to trick him into pursuing carnal frivolities.

Athos settled back into the familiar warmth and the scent that was bringing back lost memories. Aramis’ hair smelled different than it used to, but there was something underneath the perfume that was infinitely familiar and comforting. There was also comfort in the fact that Aramis was deeply asleep, curled up on his side, all tension gone from his body. His spine and ribs dug into Athos’ chest on every breath. Determined to fight down his body’s ill-timed arousal, Athos forced himself to focus on the discomfort: his inability to move, the heat, the prickling pain in the hand that Aramis had immobilised, but as he began to drift back into Morpheus’ realms, deep physical contentment flooded through him, from temple to toe, such as he barely ever experienced in his waking hours.

He jerked awake and Aramis stirred, muttering something incomprehensible. Athos held his breath, but Aramis merely turned in his arms and slept on. His hip was now poking into Athos’ groin, and Athos gritted his teeth and resisted the temptation to rub himself against it. There was something ridiculous about it in a man his age. It had been different then, when their juvenile exaltation that led them to immoderate fighting, drinking and gambling would also take over their bodies. It was not the first time that he found Aramis lying next to him when he woke in the middle of the night in a state of arousal. But these were no longer the carefree days of youth when nothing mattered as they were living from moment to moment, attempting to fill every minute of their lives with as much pleasure as they could.

Flattening his back against the wall, Athos stared into the darkness. The tiny porthole let in just enough light that he could make out where Aramis’ face was. He raised his hand from where it rested on Aramis’ chest and touched his forehead gently with the tips of his fingers. Aramis’ skin was cold and clammy, but as long as he was asleep, the mal de mer had no hold over him. Athos grinned. There was something strangely endearing about Aramis suffering from such a ridiculous, vulgar malady. Perhaps it had something to do with Raoul, who had roused paternal feelings in his breast which Athos had never expected to experience, that he felt so protective of Aramis; even though he would rather ram his own poignard into his throat than admit any of it to Aramis, who would most definitely not take kindly to such a confession.

The Leviathan was gaining upon him again; a majestic beast whose heartbeat he felt through the vibrations of the wooden planks. Before he got swallowed and engulfed in its giant maw, Athos reached out blindly and grasped Aramis’ hand, and he gave himself over to oblivion.

The morning greeted him with a stream of curses. Aramis, dishevelled and ill-tempered, was peeling himself out of the cocoon into which Athos had enveloped him. Blaspheming with great relish, he freed himself from the cloaks that had served as their blankets and lay flat on his back, breathing as if he’d just fought a duel.

“Are you feeling better?” Athos had used the opportunity to finally free his arm that didn’t even feel like his anymore. 

“I’m famished,” Aramis said. “I could eat an ox.” He glanced over, took Athos’ hand between his and began to rub it to get the blood flowing again. “Did I sleep on it all night?”

“I didn’t want to wake you.”

“And drink a whole bottle of wine,” Aramis continued, pressing Athos’ hand. 

Athos slammed his fist twice against the wall. “Grimaud,” he said in answer to Aramis’ raised eyebrows. Aramis smirked, rolled off the cot and stood, supporting himself with both hands against the ceiling. “It’s foggy out there,” he observed after a look through the porthole. 

“We must be near the English coast then.”

The door opened and Grimaud came in, silent like the grave, carrying a tray with breakfast. He sat it down on the opposite cot, walked back to the door, heaved in Athos’ trunk, and disappeared as silent as he had come. Aramis scratched the back of his neck and, wincing in disgust, peeled off the linen from where it stuck to his skin. 

“I don’t suppose you have trained Blaisois equally well,” he said.

“No. Blaisois only understands what he is told, in unmistakable, and preferably short, words. He is all yours to train, if you wish.”

“I don’t have the patience,” Aramis said. 

Athos, who had knelt down by his trunk and was searching through it, stood and held out a shirt to Aramis. “Here, put this on.”

“Are you trying to make up for giving me an inferior groom?” Aramis said, but his eyes were smiling with genuine, heartfelt joy.

Athos stepped around him and tugged at his shirt. “Take it off.” The ship rolled, and he steadied himself with a hand at Aramis’ hip. Outside, the sky and the sea were the colour of the pale horse, and the light that trickled in through the porthole was equally grey. It made Aramis’ skin glow in almost a pearly white, and Athos could not shake off the feeling that he was still wandering through the otherworld. But Aramis, as Athos helped him out of his sweat-soaked shirt, steadying him against the roll of the ship, was solid and warm, and very unmistakably not a denizen of the world of dreams. 

“I confess I won’t be loath to go off board,” Aramis said as he sat down for breakfast. “Even this rather fine Chambertin turns into slop in my mouth in this infernal hole.”

“Leviathan,” Athos muttered, looking around the small cabin with a wistful smile.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing.” Athos shook his head. “When you’re finished, let’s go on deck. We will probably be able to see the coast by now.”

“If the fog lifts,” Aramis said. “Which it might not. This _is_ England.”

“Do you regret coming?”

“Never. Better this than the Bastille. Or the dungeon of Vincennes.” Aramis raised his bumper and toasted Athos. “To heroic endeavours! To King Charles!”

“King Charles!” Athos replied. “To a long reign and glory.”


End file.
